“Cowabunga!” Marcus Ender stomped on the brake of his truck and jerked the steering wheel to the right, nearly jackknifing the empty horse trailer he was towing behind him. Snow glistened on the evergreen branches and banked along the sides of the road where the plow had gone through.
At first he thought he was seeing things. But no.
The animal was there right in front of his eyes, all right—except it wasn’t a cow that had bounded into the road and completely blocked his truck from passing. Marcus narrowed his gaze on the antlered beast.
Not an elk. Not a deer—at least not the white-tailed variety that one generally expected to find in the thickly forested Colorado landscape. He rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands.
A reindeer? Like the kind that pulled Santa’s sleigh? Up on the housetop and all that?
Man, was this thing lost. Like on another continent, lost—or wherever the North Pole was supposed to be. Geography had never been Marcus’s best subject.
He chuckled. The reindeer, which stood right in front of his truck with garland draped around its neck, calmly ruminated and stared back at him as if he were the odd man out.
Maybe he was. Texas born and raised in Oklahoma, he had never been to Colorado before. He wouldn’t be here now if he wasn’t doing a favor for his Grandma Sheryl. He was already anticipating being home for the holidays at his grandmother’s ranch in Red Bluff, Oklahoma. His older brother, Matt, had already arrived, celebrating the holiday with the family for his first time in years. Marcus didn’t know how he felt about that—he and Matt had never gotten along well and hadn’t seen each other in a long time, but he hadn’t been the one to put distance between them, and he wasn’t about to let Matt ruin the holidays for him.
He’d just pick up the horses here that his grandmother had purchased and be on his way—as soon as the reindeer decided to move. It was taking its own good time about it.
He was about to roll down the window and shake his hat at it, but then it occurred to him that the animal must belong to someone, probably a local, if the garland was anything to go by. Could reindeer be domesticated? He had no idea how much one cost, but he was guessing they couldn’t be cheap.
It wasn’t in his nature to drive away when he might be able to help someone find a missing pet, and anyway, he was curious. He hoped it was tame.
Did reindeer bite? Worse yet, since he didn’t know what he was doing with a live reindeer, he ran the distinct prospect of antlers prodding his hindquarters.
Taking a deep breath and whispering a prayer for safety, he gently opened the cab door, half expecting the reindeer to dart away into the brush, or worse yet, charge him. It lifted its head and followed his movements but didn’t appear to be startled by his presence.
“Easy now,” he murmured gently. He took one step toward it, then two. “We’re all friends here, right?”
The reindeer’s ears twitched forward as if it understood what he was saying.
“Right,” he repeated, verbally reassuring himself. As a general rule he liked animals and they responded in kind, but a reindeer?
Even if he could get next to it and even if it was somehow tagged with an address—which was highly unlikely, now that he thought about it—what was he going to do with it? Sure, he was pulling a horse trailer, but there was no way he would attempt to load a wild animal into it.
He heard the clip-clop of a horse’s hooves on the pavement behind him and turned just in time to see a woman riding bareback toward him on a very large black draft horse. The sun shone directly behind her and Marcus lowered his straw cowboy hat over his brow to shade his eyes. He couldn’t make out more than her shadow, but she looked downright diminutive on top of the enormous Percheron.
“I see you’ve met Crash,” she said with a spritely laugh.
Marcus froze at the sound of her voice, and for a moment he thought his heart stopped beating.
He knew that voice. He knew that laugh.
“Sarah?”
“Marcus?” Sarah sounded just as stunned as he felt, as well she should be. What was his high school sweetheart doing out here in the middle of the Colorado forest?
Even if he hadn’t recognized her voice, his heart affirmed the truth and his pulse raced wildly at the thought of seeing her again. It had been a long time. As far as Marcus was concerned, too long. Either that, or not nearly long enough.
Sarah trotted up to him and reined the horse to a halt. He reached for the horse’s head without a second thought. She’d been riding with nothing more than a rope halter to guide her enormous mount.
He wasn’t surprised that Sarah rode with such ease. She’d always had a way with horses.
And reindeer, apparently. Crash, was it?
“I don’t understand,” she said, effortlessly swinging her leg around and sliding off the Percheron. She looked thinner than he remembered her, and the circles under her eyes were almost as dark as her sable hair, which she had pulled back into a loose ponytail. She’d slung a lariat across her shoulder and looked halfway as if she’d just ridden out of an old Western. “What are you doing here?”
Without taking the time to think through his actions, Marcus grinned and enveloped her in an impromptu hug. He’d always respected the value of a good hug, even before spending the past several years working as a counselor at a ranch for troubled teens. To his dismay, she immediately stiffened in his embrace. He dropped his arms and stepped back, feeling as awkward as the youth he was when he’d seen her last. He cleared his throat, wondering what to say to break the silence.
“I suppose I could ask the same thing of you.” Marcus paused and then clicked his tongue as the realization sprung on him. “Except I think I already know.”
Grandma Sheryl had sent him on this errand to pick up some horses she’d bought on his way to her Oklahoma ranch, and he’d agreed without even remotely suspecting an alternate motive. Anything for his grandma—anything except this. Grandma wasn’t usually so sly. Heat rushed to his face and he lowered his head so Sarah wouldn’t see his flaming cheeks.
Why hadn’t it occurred to him before that Grandma Sheryl might have something up her sleeve? He wouldn’t put it past her to have cooked up some nutty matchmaking scheme. How was he going to explain that to Sarah? Her reception could be termed less than enthusiastic.
“I didn’t expect...you,” Sarah admitted, voicing exactly what Marcus had been thinking. “When I spoke to your grandmother, I had the impression she was sending one of her wranglers to collect my horses from me, not one of her grandsons.”
“If it makes any difference, she didn’t tell me I’d be seeing you, either.”
“Oh.”
That one syllable pretty much summed it up. His skin prickled as if he was breaking out in hives. Had it not occurred to Grandma Sheryl that this encounter might not go well? That Sarah might not want to see him again? He and Sarah hadn’t parted on the best of terms after they’d graduated from high school, and they hadn’t seen each other since. And she didn’t sound as if she was too thrilled about the prospect of seeing him now.
“I’m just here to collect the horses and then I’ll get out of your hair,” he promised, grinning despite the discomfort of his churning stomach.
“Fine,” she agreed with a clipped nod. She wasn’t even trying to smile. “But first I need to take care of Crash. Clever girl somehow opened the paddock gate and decided to take a little hike on her own. I was afraid I might have lost her for good.”
Marcus eyed Crash and then the Percheron. “How do you plan to get her back to your ranch?”
She